New York, NY —

The city's first official count of homeless who stay on the streets of Manhattan at night was completed early yesterday morning. About a thousand volunteers, many of them city workers and social service professionals, but others just average New Yorkers, braved the cold to see who they could find. WNYC's Cindy Rodriguez reports:

During a one-hour training session at a lower Manhattan office building a group of over 50 volunteers were given instructions for the night. City Employee, Bill De Stefano told the group to interview every person they encountered :

Stefano: Whether it's a man in a suit leaving a fancy restaurant or someone in a full-length mink everyone gets questioned.

Joe Lopez is a 36-year-old software engineer and was assigned along with 6 others to search an area underneath the FDR that extended from the Fulton Fish Market to the Manhattan Bridge:

Lopez: I didn't know we were going to speak to them so it should be fun talking to some of the people to find out what they're like, I've never really spoken to homeless people before maybe once or twice.

Getting to know the population is something the city says they hope the count accomplishes. But the questionnaire distributed to volunteers only consisted of the very basics, such as do you have a place to live and where do you usually sleep. Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Linda Gibbs says the results of the count will be beneficial in other ways:

Gibbs: Part of this is just in this very intentionally symbolic act of doing a count we're being willing to hold ourselves accountable for knowing what the number is and not bury our heads in the sand as unsolvable problem. These are really reluctant folks who refuse to come in and we will not give up on any of them.

Underneath the southern end of the FDR traffic whizzed overhead, as volunteers approached a man already bedded down for the night. Wrapped in blankets and hidden by an old stationwagon on one side and a metal barricade on the other.. he lifted his head as Lopez and another volunteer knelt close by. They offered him shelter but Lopez said he responded in Spanish and refused:

Lopez: Basically he said he didn't like shelter. I asked him why and he started to tell me why he was telling me when he goes to the shelters he gets beat up people take his things and that's when those lights went off .

The glaring lights belonged to a TV crew nearby. While Lopez's conversation with the man was more in depth than what the volunteer training instructed, it is this type of information that some advocates say is really needed in order to understand why some homeless refuse to enter shelters. John Speer is the Director of Community Relations at the Partnership for the homeless. He says a count done by volunteers who don't understand the complexity of the problem is not going to provide valuable information:

Speer: We need to invest more on out reach, paid, trained staff who spend nights and days working the streets and engaging homeless people and developing a relationship with them and uh assessing their needs and moving them from being on the streets to receiving the services that they need.

And those most resistant to leaving the streets are the ones the city says it's most interested in. Gibbs says the city chose a very cold mid-winter night to do the count on purpose:

Gibbs: The knowledge that we want to gain is of those individuals who even in this most severe of weather are still choosing to stay on the street.

But some advocates worry the weather only helped skew the count downward. Speer says volunteers also did not search the trains or venture into abandoned buildings or cars.

Speer: So we are particularly worried that members of the press and elected officials, heads of government are going to take this number and say this is the accurate census of the number of homeless people in New York City who are on the street and that's not so. And if any number that a government produces should have an asterisk next to it, this is the number because there are so many caveats that make this number not accurate.

But the city says the number is only meant to be an estimate. Roseanne Haggerty is director of Common Ground, an organization that provides housing to the formerly homeless. She says her group has been counting the homeless in the Times Square area for the last 2 years and agrees the question of being exact is immaterial:

Haggerty: ..you do have a very good sense if you're doing the same methodology , the same approach, the same area, you do get a sense of how this issue has changed or moved

Though numbers from the count won't be tallied for another two weeks. The group searching the southern portion of the area beneath the FDR found a total of 5 individuals.

At about one in the morning volunteers leaned over a railing that separates the street from the East Rivers tattered and trash strewn shoreline. They speculate whether someone is hidden under what looks to be a pile of wool blankets covered by a plastic tarp. Volunteer Glenn Panazollo jumped over the railing with a flashlight in hand to get a better look:

Panazollo: Are you ok do you need anything I'm just going to give you a card and then we'll leave you alone sorry to bother you.

The man who called himself Patrick also rejected an offer to go to a shelter. Borough wide though the city says 17 people did decide to come off the streets. Its goal is to completely remove everyone and Commissioner Linda Gibbs says as of last week there were 250 vacant beds within the shelter system and another 270 available for weather emergencies. She says the number is more than enough to meet the current demand:

Gibbs: If we find thousands of people on the street by definition there will have to be new solutions in order to solve that problem. Our goal will not be to build more shelter. Our goal will be to understand why they're choosing the street and to look at options that will help prevent and eliminate homelessness. It's not a solution just to build more shelter. That doesn't solve homelessness.

The Department of Homeless Services hopes to mimic the count in the remaining 4 boroughs so that a city wide number can be obtained.

For WNYC; I'm Cindy Rodriguez